Medical health care workers, such as physicians, nurses, dentists and paramedics, constantly come into contact with infectious micro-organisms (viruses, bacteria, and spores) or body fluids containing such micro organisms. For example, medical health care workers in hospitals are routinely exposed to extremely dangerous and persistent pathogens such as Hepatitis B, Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli, Candida, Listeria, Tuberculosis and viruses causing human immunodeficiency (HIV). Many pathogens, including the above listed micro-organisms, are carrier transient between non-infected and infected persons. Many of such pathogens can be transmitted by simple contact, such as on the hands of medical personnel. Thus, the risk of transmission exists even when the medical health care workers contact arises from non-invasive procedures.
Medical health care workers are constantly required to exchange their time and service between patients. Due to comparatively recent changes in the medical environment affecting the presence of lethal pathogens such as the appearance of HIV, the routine of patient contact is increasingly risk-laden for both the medical health care worker and his patients. If the medical care worker's hands and forearms are not properly cleaned or covered, the worker can act as a transmitter of the disease between patients or become a receiver of the disease himself. The wearing of gloves and hand washing with germicidal agents are the only personal disciplines for protection against such transmissions.
Hand washing is a method of germicidal cleansing which attempts to reduce pathogens on the hand to insignificant levels by trying to either kill or remove a significant percentage of them. Gloves are a barrier protection between the wearer and the patient. The gloves become contaminated through use, including contact with any non-sterilized surface. Thus the process of removing and replacing gloves is itself a contaminative one for the hands and lower arms. Hands should never be gloved, ungloved or re-gloved without germicidal cleansing. Accordingly, today's routine medical procedure, particularly in hospitals, requires a very high incidence of health care worker hand washing. In a normal day, medical health care workers do such hand washing between twenty and a hundred times.
Since many lethal micro-organisms are difficult to remove or destroy, simple washing techniques are not foolproof. Protocols for washing are not always completely followed. Pathogens can and do survive hand washing. The frequency of contact and exposure in health care facilities increase the likelihood of contagion through such residual contamination.
In addition, frequent hand washing creates problems of failing skin integrity due to the skin's intolerance to repeated use of anti-microbial chemicals and detergent soaps. Such failing skin integrity seriously increases the risk of infection of the health care worker and transmittal by the health care worker of infection between patients. The use of emollients to protect skin integrity defeats the antimicrobial cleansing and acts to contaminate the medical care worker's hands.
Hand washing protocols can be routinely maintained within medical care facilities, where sinks and disinfectants are a few steps away. However, a different situation exists outside such facilities. In ambulances, in rescue and fire trucks, in field clinics, and in police emergency vehicles, there are no such facilities. Remaining germicidally clean by conventional hand washing techniques is extremely difficult, if not impossible, in such environments. However, it is in these very environments that there is a particularly high-risk of pathogen contact-exposure.
It has long been recognized that pathogens can be destroyed in the air, in water or on exposed surfaces if they are irradiated with ultraviolet light at the wavelength of 253.7 nanometers. However, use of such ultraviolet light for germicidal cleansing has been severely restricted. It has been used to treat air or water, which is circulated past an ultraviolet source in a cabinet or the like and then into the use environment. Similarly ultraviolet light has been used to sterilize small objects in a closed environment.
For example U.S. Pat. No. 4,786,812 to Wesley G. Humphreys issued on Nov. 22, 1988 discloses a light weight and portable germ killing machine which is used to purify air which is drawn past a series of ultraviolet lights at the appropriate wavelength. Similarly, U.S. Pat. No. 4,950,902 to Charles H. Ritter, issued on Aug. 21, 1990, U.S. Pat. No. 4,877,964 to Yoshio Tanaka, issued on Oct. 31, 1989, and U.S. Pat. No. 3,683,638 issued to George S. Devon on Aug. 15, 1972 all disclose chambers where ultraviolet light is used as a germicidal agent.
This prior art does not teach the use of an enclosed ultraviolet chamber in which gloved or ungloved hands and arms can be inserted for a combination of germicidally cleansing and warm air and ultraviolet drying of the hands and arms after scrubbing. Equally, none of the devices disclose a chamber constructed to diffuse the ultraviolet light energy throughout the chamber to ensure that there is complete exposure to ultraviolet light at a desired level on all exterior surfaces of the hands and arms so inserted.